


A Haven In A Heartless World

by csi_sanders1129



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csi_sanders1129/pseuds/csi_sanders1129
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Priest hasn’t had a family in a long time, but now that the vampire menace is no more, how will he cope with having one again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, yeah. Another fic another rarefandom. This is slash, blah blah blah, you all know the drill, right? Priest/Hicks ficcage. Takes place a few years after the movie. Title comes from a quote by Christopher Lasch - "The family is a haven in a heartless world." Characters are not mine (except one) and please do enjoy! Thanks to kittycrackers for help! Comments are awesome!

The sound of a heavy weight against the front door brings Hicks to full coherency with well-honed speed. He’s alert and he has his hand on his firearm in a matter of seconds, prepared to shoot at whatever intruder dares to invade the sanctity of his home. 

But, no further sound follows so he is therefore compelled to investigate. 

Everything is silent now. Alarmingly so. He stands, walks the few paces to the door from his meager bed in the front room of his equally meager house, stops to listen. Still nothing. He pulls the door open and at first sees nothing. But, at his feet, lays the Priest. 

“Fuck,” he says quietly, eyes scanning the area for signs of how he ended up here. No sign of vampire tracks, no movement, just a solar bike fallen on its side a couple dozen yards away. Dark disturbances in the dust – blood, not footprints – mark the path from there to the doorstep. A lot of blood. 

He hauls the Priest in, ducks outside long enough to cover the trail – no need to risk the blood drawing any unsavory guests, rare as they are these days – and then gets back inside. He bolts the door and finds a light and sets to work on doing what he can to fix his friend up. 

That ends up being a rather arduous task. There’s so so so much blood. On the plus side, not all of it apparently belongs to the Priest, as he’s got Black Hat’s head in a bag belted to his hip and that’s good news if not a slightly grotesque method of transportation. His own wounds, though, are far from minor. There’s a gash on his stomach that’s impressively deep and another on his leg that makes Hicks wonder how he managed to control his bike at all. His arm is set at an alarming angle that equates either to broken bones or dislocated shoulder and he’s got a darkening bruise on his head that is also quite worrisome. 

Hicks does what he can, everything he can, with the supplies he has on hand, cleans him up as best as possible and surrenders his bed for the use of the injured man. He sits beside the Priest all night, eyes on the door and gun in hand. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. 

***

The Priest wakes three days later. He’s sore in ways he can’t remember ever being before and even the mere idea of opening his eyes causes pain to radiate in waves through his body. He forces them open anyway, surprised to find himself at what was once his family’s home. It still is his family’s home though, since Lucy and Hicks are here now, he reminds himself, even as he wonders how the hell he ended up here. 

“Hicks?” He mumbles out, voice hoarse and so rough that the single word makes him cough severely. 

The young man appears from the only other room in the house, and he seems surprised and relieved to find the Priest awake. “Welcome back. I was worried for a while there.”

“How’d I get here?”

“You, ugh, showed up on the porch a few nights back. I did what I could. Wasn’t sure you’d wake up.” 

The Priest nods. He doesn’t remember getting here, but he supposes it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. His training can result in weird effects when he’s too badly injured to get himself out of trouble. “Lucy isn’t around?” He asks, picking up on the fact that Hicks said he’d done the patchwork. 

Hicks’ face falls in a way that sets off warning bells. “No.” He looks away, around the room and then down at the old, creaky floorboards. “She, ugh, she’s… she’s gone.”

“What!?” He tries to sit up. His wounds scream in protest and he hits the mattress with considerable force when he falls back.

“Don’t move, you’ll pull the stitches,” Hicks warns, but now he’s looking and there are tears and the Priest really doesn’t know what to do with that. How did this happen? How could his daughter be gone? Was it a vampire? Bandits? Why didn’t Hicks stop them? Why hadn’t anyone told him!? Apparently Hicks figures out the gist of the Priest’s internal monologue, because he starts in with: “Look, don’t… I… it wasn’t anyone’s fault. No bloodsuckers. It just happened. You can call it God’s will if you want to, but it’s just crap. She’s gone and it’s not fair and… and I don’t know what to do anymore.”

That isn’t good enough for Priest, though. He settles an icy glare on the boy and demands, “How!?”

“Childbirth. There were… complications. And there was so much blood. And I couldn’t… there wasn’t anything I could do, that anyone could do. I… I have a son but I don’t have Lucy and I don’t know what…”

The news hits the Priest with unprecedented force. His injuries seem to pulse with pain and now there’s a fresh ache that presses down on his chest, making it harder to breathe. Through the haze his mind is in, he manages, “A son?”

“Lucy named him Shane. As close as she could get to Shannon, she said,” there’s a chocked sob that the Priest respectfully pretends not to hear and Hicks disappears into the back room long enough to collect a squirmy three month old infant wrapped in a warm blanket. “Here. He kind of looks like you. The eyes, at least.” Hicks passes the moving bundle of baby to the Priest’s good arm and makes sure that he’s not close to pressing on any of the carefully bandaged wounds. 

He takes in his grandson with silent reverence. And that is not a sentence he ever imagined himself thinking. “I see a lot of you in him, too,” the Priest comments. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Hicks perches on the edge of the bed, more composed now. “I tried. I spent a while trying to reach you, but nothing worked. I thought I managed to get word to you when the Priestess showed up here once, but I guess she never caught up to you?”

Now it’s the Priest’s turn to deliver bad news. “She’s dead. Got caught in a hive a couple weeks back. She killed the Queen, but she was supposed to wait for back-up and Black Hat got to her first. That’s how I ended up on his trail.”

“I’m sorry.” Hicks frowns and runs a hand through his son’s curly blond hair. “It’s been two years since you left, I didn’t know how to contact you, where you’d be.” He smiles slightly, when Shane curls a tiny little hand into the material of the Priest’s shirt, comfortable and clingy, as he drifts back to sleep. “I found Black Hat’s head, by the way. It’s buried for now – didn’t know what you wanted done with it.”

“Sounds good to me,” he agrees, transfixed by the child. 

Hicks just sits there, unmoving and silent, until at last, he asks, “What happens now?”


	2. Chapter 2

What happens now is that the Priest stays. He should leave, go back to Cathedral City, back into whatever form of retirement he’s supposed to have been in all along. Where he doesn’t use his skills and slinks along amongst the citizens pretending he hasn’t seen what he’s seen, done what he’s done, or saved every last one of them from the vampires, where the normal citizens look down upon him, down upon the marks on his face that declare him a Priest meant to protect the city. 

He stays. With Hicks, with Shane. Even after his wounds heal up, leaving him with several new scars, he stays. He watches the boy grow into a curious, strong, healthy eighteen month old. He helps train Hicks in the ways of the Priest’s, no longer caring that such secrets are not meant to be shared. This is the only family he has left and he will do whatever he can to protect them and if that means giving away the mysteries of an impressive combat style, then so be it. 

They're working with throwing knives, kind of like the ones the Priest used at the Nightshade reservation so long ago. It requires an impressive amount of concentration to get them to fly the right way and Hicks is good. He's always been good - probably would have been recruited into the Priesthood if the rest of the world hadn't remained in denial of the continued presence of the vampire menace outside of the Cities. 

"Okay, now," the Priest instructs, hoping to see the three bladed pieces of metal fly to hit the target set up on the other side of the yard when his protégé releases them. Hicks closes his eyes for a split second, and suddenly the spikes are flying, but they're hovering unsteadily, and then they scream and clatter across the ground, falling short at about the halfway point. "You're getting closer. You need to concentrate more."

"How?" Hicks asks. That's what he always asks. It's never 'I can't do this' or 'But I was concentrating,' it's always 'how?' And the Priest can definitely work with that. 

“Think of something that makes you strong, happy, something good,” the Priest tells him. The memory he used when he first started was of Shannon, beautiful and perfect and his, back before the Priests existed for him, before they made him sacrifice his world for this new one. The first time he kissed her, the first time he got to hold his daughter. “Focus on that and you’ll get it.”

Hicks does as told, collects up the knives and reclaims his prior position. He thinks hard, tries to pluck a good memory out of all the bad and maybe kind of finds one. He lets the blades go, but they fall back to the ground just a few feet away. 

The Priest doesn’t give him time to contemplate the failed attempt. “What were you using?” 

“When we rescued Lucy?”

He’s not really sure why that wouldn’t work, but maybe there’s too many dark memories, too many fresh memories for the light to outshine the shadows right now. “Try something else, if you can.”

The younger man nods. “Alright,” he says, and his eyes flick over to where the Priest stands with Shane in his arms, entertaining the giggly, babbly child as he watches over Hicks’ training. He smiles, picks this moment, right now. Deep breath in, slow breath out, eyes closed as he focuses on his memory and then they fly. Hard and fast, they stick into the target, scattered but still on the board and that is certainly progress.

“Excellent,” Priest answers and he does not give praise easily. He doesn’t ask what memory he used this time and Hicks is glad of that because he’s not sure he could lie convincingly enough to fool the Priest. “Nicely done,” he says, “but do it again.”

Hicks repeats the move, again and again and again and again, until all three blades land within centimeters of each other at the core of the target. He’s grinning when Priest calls for a stop, and his mentor’s smiling, too. Looking on him with pride and respect that he’s worked hard to earn. 

“That’s enough for today,” the Priest says, clapping Hicks on the back with the hand that isn’t supporting Shane. “Whatever you used, it works.”

“Yeah,” Hicks agrees, ruffling Shane’s blond hair as he walks back to the house, matching the Priest stride for stride. “It did.”

***

Hicks plays with Shane while the Priest throws a meager dinner together for them all. He’s asking the baby to form whatever words he can, rough approximations of ‘dada,’ and ‘no,’ and a lengthy list of animals that none of them will ever see outside of books, and on and on it goes as he stumbles around on wobbly baby feet. But Hicks finds himself watching the Priest almost as much as he’s watching Shane. He’s kind of mystified by how much Lucy was like her father. The way she moved is the way he moves, steady and immovable, a force he could never hope to resist. Attitudes, both strong-willed, stubborn and determined as all hell. And their blue eyes - all three of them, the Priest, Lucy, Shane - the same deep, ocean blue; the color of something he’s never seen before, something to rivals the endless Wasteland brown and the metallic, inhuman steel of the Cities. 

Sometimes he hates that he sees so much of the Priest in his memories of Lucy, but most of the time it’s like he still has a piece of her around. More than that, really, since technically he was seeing the Priest in all of the things he loved about Lucy. And he doesn’t know how to feel about that realization because he’s starting to think things that he’s not supposed to be, that he can’t be. 

“Food’s ready,” he calls over and Hicks gathers the boy up into his arms and cross the room, taking his seat at their small table. “If it doesn’t snow much tonight,” the Priest says, as he passes a plate to Hicks, “we can try something more advanced with the knives tomorrow. If you’d like.”

“I would like that,” Hicks answers, feeding himself and Shane at the same time. The baby’s getting pretty close to sleepy, but he eats contentedly - if messily - and mumbles out streams of baby babbling as Hicks tries to figure out his ever-growing internal dilemma. An uncomfortable silence has fallen between them and he can feel the Priest’s eyes on him, can almost hear the questions about the way he’s acting, but he makes himself look up anyway. “What?”

The Priest shakes his head. “Nothing.” A pause and then, “It’ll be cold tonight, I think.” It’s always cold at night now, though. It’s the middle of winter and while the days are still considerably warm, the temperatures at night drop alarmingly fast. “We should make sure we’re good on firewood.”

Hicks is about to volunteer, grateful for the chance to escape, but the Priest is already ducking out the door. 

“Okay, then,” he sighs, pushing his unfinished plate of food away. Shane appears to be finished, too, so he quickly cleans up and goes to get the boy ready for bed. Bath time and warm clothes precede warm blankets and a short made up story. “Night night,” he tells his son, who echoes him, and he drags a hand through Shane’s messy hair as he falls asleep. He makes sure the stuffed bear, a costly gift that the Priest obtained in one of the Wasteland towns, is close by and then he takes his leave. 

He finds the Priest dragging in a fresh load of firewood, piling it in the corner for use. “He asleep?” The older man asks, now moving to stoke the fire. 

“Out like a light, as always,” Hicks answers. They were both extremely grateful for the easy baby. Especially at the beginning, when they were both mourning Lucy and they didn’t really know what they were doing. Now they have it down and Shane’s easygoing nature is in direct contradiction to Lucy’s personality, which might be a good thing, really. “I’ll check out the house,” he volunteers, stepping outside to do their usual sweep of the property before they turn in themselves. Everything’s clear, but he double-checks the locks before he goes in, eyes scanning and ever alert. “We’re good.”

“Fire’s steady, too,” the Priest answers, getting to his feet. 

They both eye the bed - the only one they have. Normally they sleep in shifts, or one of them takes the floor, but the cold temperatures have been forcing a little more cohabitation than they’re strictly used to - perhaps another factor in Hicks’ state of confusion. 

“I can take the floor, if you’re sick of sharing.”

A way out, Hicks knows, that’s what he’s offering. The Priest is starting to get suspicious. “No. I will.”

The Priest doesn’t argue, just heads for the bed. “I’ll wake you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” Hicks echoes. 

***

In the middle of the night, the snow starts. The snowfall makes everything seem quiet, hushed as it blankets the wasteland dirt. Almost eerie, really. The cold seeps in through the wooden walls and the thin blanket Hicks has and he finds himself shivering on the floor. Shane’s room will be warm - they make sure of that - and the blanket the Priest has is a little thicker than his own, so he’s the only one suffering. 

“I can hear your teeth chattering from over here,” the older man’s voice whispers. “Get over here, already.” 

Hicks doesn’t need to be asked twice. He gathers up his blanket - combined with the Priest’s, they’re pretty effective and the shared body heat certainly doesn’t hurt - and crosses the room. The bed’s a tight fit for two grown men, but they manage, arms and legs shifted in such a way as to keep them both in place, blankets piled accordingly. Warm, comfortable silence falls between them as Hicks starts to drift to sleep. It’s so different. The short time he had with Lucy here, like this. The Priest is all hard muscle and scarred skin, sharp bones and strong body; Lucy had been soft curves and smooth skin, long hair that always smelled nice. So different, but he finds he doesn’t mind the differences. Besides, love and necessity mark clear dividing lines in intentions and he has nothing to compare with Lucy’s soft, gentle touches and he’s never going to, either.

“What memory did you use?” The Priest wonders aloud, bringing Hicks’ out of his thoughtless dreams and back to a cold, hard reality. 

“Shane,” he says. He’s only kind of lying. Shane had been part of it. He can feel those eyes again, blue and determined and when he turns his head to look, he sees that determination and he knows he won’t be able to avoid this forever. “And you.”

The Priest stares at him. “Me.”

“Family. Both of you. Today. That’s what I picked and it worked.”

“Why me?” He asks, confusion on his face even though Hicks still thinks he knows the reason why. 

“Because,” Hicks answers and then he moves. He knows the Priest won’t react well, that there’s no way he’ll want this, too - as much as the older man rebelled against the ruling Clergy, he won’t go this far - but Hicks has to get it out. It doesn’t require much given their proximity, but he kisses the Priest. 

***

For a second, he lets it happen. 

He kisses back, revels in the feeling of it, lips on lips and his body’s automatically moving into the action.

But it’s just for a second. 

Then he’s pushing away, a hand on Hicks’ chest to keep him down when he tries to follow after. “I can’t. You know I can’t,” he says, frowning down at the younger man. “I made a vow.”

The others made the same vow, he knows, as all of the Priests and Priestesses had to. But his brothers and sisters in the Order were not all so dedicated to it. Many of them were involved, either amongst themselves or with civilians. It would hardly be a new occurrence if he were to break the vow, but with all he’s already done in going against the Monsignors in charge in Cathedral City, there are only so many ties that he’s willing to sever. While he’s through with their whole ‘To go against the Church is to go against God,’ philosophy, he’s not yet sure where he’s drawing the line with this.

After all, unless the Clergy have recruited new members, he is the last of the Order. 

Hicks lets out a frustrated sigh and rolls off the bed and to his feet in a steady motion. He makes for the door, tossing a biting, “I know,” over his shoulder as he goes. The blankets do nothing to block the chill of the snowy wind that breaks into the house in the time it takes him to get outside. The door closes sharply behind him - not enough to wake Shane, though - and then the Priest is moving. 

“Oh, sure,” he mumbles to himself as he follows the younger man outside. “Not like it’s freezing outside or anything. Brilliant idea.”

He’s pretty immune to the cold. Being a Priest has made him highly tolerant of a lot of extremes - cold, hot, pain, loss - but it’s chilly tonight even by his standards, the icy wind biting through his clothes. He finds Hicks pacing on the porch, arms curled around himself for some semblance of warmth.

“Hicks.” 

***

He doesn’t know what he was expecting. He doesn’t even know why he did it. 

For a second, he’d thought that the Priest returned his feelings - whatever those feelings are, he’s still not sure of that - but that second had been abruptly followed by rejection. But then ‘can’t’ and ‘don’t want to’ are two very different things and he’s not sure how to reconcile those together, either. 

He’s more confused than ever, angry and hurt at being turned down. 

“What?”

“Look,” the Priest says, standing next to him. Close, the kind of close that makes Hicks’ confusion even worse because if he really didn’t want this, then he’d give some distance. “I’m sorry. But I...”

“Made a vow. Celibacy. So you said,” Hicks answers. “Whatever. Not to mention the Church isn’t fond of this when Priests aren’t involved. I guess us heathens out here in the Wastelands missed that lesson.”

Getting involved with another man is not a tremendously common situation, but it’s not unheard of, either. Not in the Wastelands, anyway. Out here, you mind your own business and no one much cares what you get up to or who you get up to it with. The Cities are different. He knows that, but sometimes he forgets that the Priest spent so much time there and he’s not sure what to think about that. What the Priest thinks about their rules inside the walls. 

But then there’s a hand on his shoulder, settled gently there. “Can we talk about this is the morning?” He asks. “It’s late and it’s cold and you should come inside.” The sound of Shane crying gets both of their attentions and the argument dies right there. 

“Fine,” Hicks caves, letting the Priest nudge him back into their home. “That’s fine.”

“Good. Go back to bed. I’ll get Shane back to sleep.”

He goes, buries himself against the wall and forces himself not to move. Shane quiets, eventually and Priest returns to their bed, crawling in behind him. He studiously ignores the arm that falls over his side - there’s nowhere else for it to go, after all - and even though he’s still reeling with confused emotions, he eventually falls asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t talk about it.

Hicks thinks about bringing it up when they’re training in the snow the next day. He thinks about bringing it up that night when they have to share the bed again. He thinks about it at least a dozen times between those two points and even more so afterward. But he doesn’t. And the Priest remains silent, as well. 

Soon, two weeks have gone by with no trace of the conversation. Hicks has made no further moves even though he’s still hopelessly lost and the Priest continues to ignore his personal space as they continue to work and live together. 

It works. It’s a little awkward and a little frustrating, but it’s all they have, their little messed up family, and it works. 

Until it doesn’t.

Until the Priest finds himself pulled back into the realm of consciousness because Hicks just keeps coughing. It’s still early in the night and the sharp, barking cough sounds painful. The Priest curls his arm a little tighter around Hicks’ shaking body and is alarmed to feel more warmth than usual radiating off of the man. Not good.

“Hicks,” he says, shaking him lightly. “Hicks, wake up.”

Bleary, confused eyes blink back at him. “What’s wrong?” He mumbles, voice rough and hoarse. More coughing, a hand comes up to his chest. 

“You’re sick,” the Priest says, perhaps stating the obvious. “Stay awake and I’ll go get you some medicine, okay?”

Hicks looks like he wants to argue, but the Priest is already climbing out of bed, disentangling himself from the hold he always ends up trapping his bedmate in. He finds some medicine amongst their meager supplies, the last of it, at that and returns to their bed. Hicks is shivering now, so fever-cold just in the time it took him to cross the room. 

“Take this,” he instructs, and luckily the other man complies easily, drinking down the liquid without a fight. It’s all he can do for now, so he climbs back into bed and settles in for a night spent on lookout for any further complications. “Try to get some sleep.”

Less than three hours, later, though, Shane wakes up screaming up a fit for no apparent reason, dragging both the Priest and a still coughing Hicks out of their shared bed with an impressive speed. Hicks gets there first, feeling marginally better now, and he scoops up the eighteen month old in an attempt to placate the boy, but that rapidly turns into alarmed concern. “He’s really warm,” he tells the Priest, who’s reaching out as soon as the words are out of his mouth, hand landing on the boy’s forehead. 

“He’s burning up,” the Priest agrees. “He’ll need a doctor.” The closest one is in Augustine, where Owen had been taken after the vampire attack. It’s not a long ride, but it’s not a short ride either, and the snowy, cold weather will not help. But then Hicks probably needs a doctor, too. “I... I’ll take him.”

“I will,” Hicks counters. The doctor in town knows him, is familiar with him, given his time spent as Sheriff. The Priest would be a near stranger to him, having only appeared the one time, when Owen was near dead and Lucy was still missing. Doc Tomlin won’t mind being woken up for this, not if it’s him, and only one of them can go, they can’t leave the house vulnerable. “Can you get my bike?”

The Priest looks like he wants to argue, but he must come to the same conclusions as Hicks has for his reasoning and so he gives a curt nod and turns away to do as asked.

Minutes pass and Hicks finds another symptom. Loud, barking coughs that sound hellishly painful, just as his own are. The boy coughs and wails and clings to him, blearily awake now. He mumbles soft reassurances to his son and holds him close, eager to get him to some help.

Finally, the Priest reappears in the doorway, catching hold of Hicks’ arm and tugging him along and out onto the porch. “All set,” he says, glad that they always keep the solar bikes charged up. Holding Shane would be impossible while driving, but they’ve fashioned a make-shift carrier that will keep him safe and secure on trips into town (they’d yet to make one with him, but they’d been planning one for less clinical reasons) that is certainly proving useful now. “Go armed, I don’t trust anyone anymore,” the Priest insists, offering him a couple of throwing daggers and a loaded gun that can all be easily conceal. “And be as quick as you can. Send me word by noon or I’m coming after you.” 

Hicks takes the weapons and agrees to the Priest’s terms. He makes sure Shane is secure and then he’s off, heading for Augustine, way off in the distance. 

The Priest paces all night, unable to even think of trying to sleep again. 

***

It takes the better part of what’s left of the night to reach the town that he used to call home, but he makes it. Pulls up in front of Doc Tomlin’s place and bangs on the door with impressive force. Shane’s still crying, the poor kid wailed and coughed the whole way here. He’s not doing too well, either - he’s covered in a cold sweat that might as well be a layer of ice with how freezing it is outside and his cough is still annoyingly persistent, with each cough sending a stab of pain through his throat and chest while his head pounds with pain. 

“Doc, I need some help out here!” He shouts, his voice sounding just off of normal, a fist slamming against the door with loud bang-bang-bang’s that would be impossible to sleep through. 

Finally, finally, a light flickers into his line of sight, and a groggy and clearly displeased Dr. Tomlin appears. “Hicks, that you?” The man growls at him. “You better have a damn good reason for this, showing up so early...”

Shane’s hacking again, the cough sounding worse and worse. Even the cold air didn’t help his fever, he actually feels hotter than ever now. “My son,” he says, nodding to Shane, “He’s sick.”

Dr. Tomlin seems somewhat surprised by this - not that many people know about Shane, as far as Hicks knows - but he sets to work all the same. He plucks the crying boy from his father’s arm and carries him into another room, one that’s better lit and more suited to work. “How long has he been like this?”

“A few hours, as long as it took to get out here. He was fine when we put him to bed.” 

“Who’s ‘we’?” The doc inquires, probably knows that Lucy’s gone even if he doesn’t know the cause of death. 

“The Priest, Lucy’s father. He’s staying with me.” He explains. “He didn’t get to be in Lucy’s life, but he can be in Shane’s, at least.”

More coughing comes from Shane, urging the doctor back to work. He looks the boy over, runs what tests he can from his limited supply and ends up giving Shane a dose of medication meant to suppress his cough. It’s mixed with a pain reliever that’s pretty strong. If it works, they should see a pretty quick effect. If it doesn’t, they’ll be in trouble. 

Doc Tomlin offers him a breakfast he can’t bring himself to eat as they wait to see if the treatment had an effect. When Hicks starts in to a coughing fit of his own, he gets a dose of the medicine, too. Dr. Tomlin also takes this time to update the ex-Sheriff on the goings on in town. “Your Priest is supposed to be back in Cathedral City. They’ve had men out looking for him. They’ve been recruiting for the Order, too, like they did back when they took him. Except they’re not taking no for an answer very often this time around.” 

The information is interesting, but more so alarming. The Priest would never go with them, he’d never go back to the life he was leading before. Hicks knows that. Not when he has Shane. But the Priest isn’t the only one he has to worry about. If the City is drafting people in to the Order, then he’s at risk, too. They know the part he played in fighting the vampires, they have to know he’s already kind of trained. And Shane could be taken, too - they’ve taken children before, the Priestess told him as much - and being the grandchild of a Priest would probably make him even more of a target for them. But he’ll do everything in his power to protect his family from the grabby clutches of the Church, no matter the consequences. 

“Looks like it worked,” Doc Tomlin hums in approval. Shane’s wailing coughs have fallen off into silence and Hicks finds himself coughing less as well. Sure enough, the boy is sound asleep in the other room, cooler to the touch than before. Hicks feels tired and pliant, like his reflexes have been dulled, too. He wants to lie down and catch some sleep, but noon will be coming on soon and he needs to send word to the Priest that they’ll be okay. 

“Rest, Hicks,” Doc Tomlin orders, pushing him down into a nearby chair. “You’ll do no one any good wandering around dead on your feet.”

Somehow, he’s out within moments.


	4. Chapter 4

Hicks wakes feeling like he’s not alone, like he’s in danger. And if he’s in danger, then Shane’s in danger, too. As much as he wants to jump back to his feet, though, he restrains himself. He cracks one eye open, and panic seizes him when he spots several men dressed in Cathedral City robes loitering about the room. One of them is holding a sleeping Shane. 

“He should be waking up soon,” Doc Tomlin is saying and Hicks isn’t sure if he’s referring to him or to Shane. 

“The Monsignors will be happy to hear we’ve found some decent recruits for once.” One of the City men says, and that’s more than enough to confirm Hicks’ suspicions. The clock in the corner of the room tells him that it’s almost noon now, and that means that the Priest will be coming after them soon enough. If he can just stall them until then, they’ll have a pretty good chance of getting away. As of now, though, Hicks still feels like he’d be moving in slow motion if he acted to stop the recruiters. 

“Our intelligence says he’s been living with the vow breaker. Should we restrain him? If he’s been trained, he won’t be easy to deal with.” Another City man argues, and rightly so. But being restrained is not something that Hicks is looking forward to. 

“He’ll be slow for a while yet, the medicine is pretty powerful.” That’s Doc Tomlin again, the jackass. And here Hicks had trusted the man. 

“Restrain him anyway, and check him for weapons.” The apparent leader of the group commands, and two of the other men set to work on this task. Hicks stays movable and quiet, still feigning drug-induced sleep, but he feels them find one of his knives and his gun. At least they missed two of the Priest’s throwing daggers. He’s surprised by the overcautious chains that they clap on him, heavy metal bands that bite into his wrists, which they bind behind his back. “And keep the kid away from him. We’ll need all the leverage we can get with this one.”

Another twenty minutes pass, and the clock ticks past noon. That’s around the time that the Cathedral City men get sick of waiting for him to wake up on his own. One kicks him hard in the leg and he’s forced to drop his act when he jumps in surprise. He was right, his movements are slow and unsteady, and when he shouts at them, demanding release and his son and their heads, his voice is just as slow, slurred like he’s been drinking far too much. He launches an uncoordinated kick at the nearest man, but he’s easily deflected and the punch the guy lands has him spitting blood. They laugh at him and drag him out of Doc Tomlin’s place without any hesitation. 

He hopes the Priest finds them fast. 

***

The hours pass slowly, and noon comes with no message from Augustine. Worry and panic are rivaling anger and frustration in the Priest’s mind because there’s no way Hicks would forget to update him if he was at all able to do so. Even if it meant getting someone else to notify him - there would have been _something_. 

The fact that there’s _nothing_ tells him that something is seriously wrong. 

It takes him no time at all to set up the solar bike - mostly because he did that roughly an hour after Hicks left with Shane anyway, just in case - and he’s off within moments. 

He’s worried. Both for Shane and for Hicks because he can’t imagine something happening that would stop Hicks from telling him what the hell is going on. Which is a lie. Because he can imagine such things and he’s spent the last eight hours doing just that. He spurs his bike into top speed and then pushes it into nitro, rocketing even faster toward his family and whatever trouble they must be in. 

Finally, Augustine appears on the horizon and he closes in carefully, eyes scanning the land for any outward signs of danger. He finds none, and heads in. Hicks’ bike is easy enough to spot, still haphazardly parked outside of Doc Tomlin’s building. 

The whole town is too quiet, though, like everyone is hiding out and that’s not good, either. As much as he wants to believe that Hicks has just been too busy, too occupied in helping Shane get better, he can’t.

He opts to forgo subtlety and kicks in the doctor’s door with a loud, resounding thud. The man jumps up, full of terror and panic when he sees just who has invaded his home and that confirms just about everything for the Priest.

“I... I’m sorry,” Dr. Tomlin starts, hands up in an I-mean-no-harm sort of gesture, already on the defensive. “I... I had to... they... there wasn’t...”

But the Priest isn’t accepting apologies right now. He approaches steadily, ice blue eyes frozen in determination as he curls a hand into the man’s shirt collar, hefting him off of his feet and pressing him back against the wall. “Where are they?”

“I...I... I don’t...”

He presses harder, leans in closer. Pressure on his neck, cutting off his air, unrepentant scowl on his face, words stone cold and venomous. “My family. Tell me where they are.”

“They made me, okay? The recruiters from the City. They said they’d kill anyone found helping you. I had to give them Hicks, I had to.”

Fear breaks through the wall of his mental armor as the words register. Fear at losing Hicks. “They’ll kill him?” His grip loosens, just a little when the full shock of that idea hits him. “Because he helped me?” The thought is enough to turn his stomach, the thought of a life without Hicks or Shane. He’s so attached to both of them - attached in a way he hasn’t let himself be since before he was recruited, back when he still had things he could lose. He’s not sure he can take any more loses.

But Tomlin shakes his head. “No, no. They’d kill the Wastelanders, if we’d helped or hid you from them. They wanted Hicks - and, and the boy. Recruits. For the Order.”

The Priest isn’t sure if that’s good news or not. In some ways, it’s almost worse than death because the Order strips you of everything you were before. They brand you and brainwash you and turn you out into society as merciless servants of the Monsignors in the name of God. He doesn’t want that for Hicks or for his grandson.

“What happened?” He demands, and then Tomlin is spilling his guts, telling him all about how the Recruiters had threatened everyone in town, how Hicks had shown up out of nowhere and he had no choice - the Recruiters make rounds in town near every day, they would have seen him here and then... He tells the Priest about the drugs - it really did help with the sickness, he swears, but the dose he gave Hicks was more than necessary and it’ll have him off his game for a while, leave him vulnerable and restricted in what he can do until it wears off. Finally, he tells the Priest when they took off, and that they were heading back toward the City, eager as they were to get Hicks and Shane initiated into the Order.

The Priest confiscates a bag of medicines and supplies from the traitorous doctor and storms off. He heads back to his bike determined to make up the lost time. If he lets the Recruiters get them into the City, it’ll be so much harder to rescue them.


	5. Chapter 5

The ride in to Cathedral City goes quickly, much to Hicks’ dismay. He’s riding double with one of the City recruiters and another man is holding Shane, keeping them purposefully separated to force Hicks into compliance. His hopes of the Priest catching up to them before they reach the city walls are dashed when they pass through the iron gates.

He finds himself shoved along, bracketed now by two of the recruiters and followed by a third. The man with Shane is somewhere behind them and every time he turns to pinpoint his location, he’s jabbed in the side and forced to continue. They lead him into the depths of a building, one of the cold, steel ones that are marked with the propaganda of the Church. 

They pass through a series of doors, all coded and secured with guards, and finally he’s led into a room that is little more than a cell, and he’s left alone. Shane is nowhere in sight now and that’s when he really starts reacting.

His first move is to get the chains in front of him. Off would be better, but this will do. He uses a trick he learned during his time as Sheriff because those he’d arrested occasionally enjoyed pulling it on him. It requires a little unobserved time and some difficult maneuvering, but he manages to get his bound arms under him and he ends up with his hands in front of him. Then he’s banging on the cell walls, as hard as he can. The bands on his wrists tear into his skin, drawing blood that gets smeared on the walls and luckily this draws the attention of the guards. They come barging in, stupidly, and Hicks is on the attack. 

He gets the jump on the first one, pulls the guy in close and gets the chain connecting the manacles on his wrist around his neck, pulling it tight. If he wanted to, he could pretty easily strangle the guard, or break his neck, but that’s not the message he needs to send right now. 

He angles the guard to act as a shield between him and the others, who are all a little put off and wary of him now, but he has demands. “Give me my son and I’ll cooperate. If you don’t, I’ll fight anyone who tries to get near me.” Granted, he has no intention of cooperating, just of staying alive long enough for the Priest to save them. “Any objections?”

“We don’t take orders from you,” one of the braver guards dares to argue with him. “The boy’s been taken to another area.”

Then, he does snap his captive’s neck. The sharp crack echoes in the room, sending the remaining guards into a panic as Hicks lets the body drop to the floor. They charge at him, but he remembers the throwing daggers he has left and he launches one of them at the brave guard, his memory of the Priest and Shane, his family, guiding it to a kill shot that leaves the man dead on the floor. He manages to get hold of it again, sustaining only minor hits in the process and then they’re all backing off, afraid of the abilities they hadn’t known he’d possessed yet, given that he’d used a trick taught only to those in the Order.

But with two dead, they can’t just retreat. A younger guard darts in, dodges around the blade that Hicks swipes at him and manages to get a hold of his arm, wrestling for the knife. It nicks Hicks in the process, but he just fights harder. 

“You really want to kill more people?” The guard hisses at him, trying to get a grip on the pressure point in Hicks’ arm now, giving up on the knife. 

“You’re not people,” Hicks growls back, “you’re just monsters.” And he has no trouble killing monsters. He’s done it before. The only difference between then and now is that the vampires had stood between he and Lucy and now it’s Shane he’s fighting for. 

The guard changes tactics again, grabs for the chain he’s used to strangle the first guard, and pulls. This effectively dislodges the knife from his grasp but it certainly doesn’t stop him. He moves to kick out at the man who’s still gripping the chain, lands a solid hit to his chest, but the guard isn’t so easily stopped either. He follows after the man, trying to kick out again, but all he ends up doing is spinning in a half circle, since his opponent has clearly caught on to his technique.

Hicks is coughing again and he knows this fight has to end soon, one way or the other because Dr. Tomlin’s medicine - as much as it had slowed his reflexes - had been helping and now it is wearing off. His adrenaline infused attack probably won’t last much longer, either. He’s moving to free himself from the guards grasp on the chain when the blow comes, a hit from behind that makes his vision blur with fuzzy stars. He’s going down, but he’s still swinging, but all that does is make something in his arm crack and then he’s out.

***

The Priest will spare no one in his mission to get his family back. Anyone who had anything to do with taking Hicks and Shane will pay dearly early for their part in it. He will shake the faith of those in Cathedral City, show them what their leaders have done in the name of God - just as the Monsignors feared when they tried to force him to comply with their ideals. The Monsignors who ordered this forced conscription of Priests and Priestesses and ignored the vampire menace in light of hard evidence will pay in their own time because they’ll never be able to explain his attack on the city away, they’ll never be able to hide it. He will fight them and they will be the ones to fall.

He reaches the gates of Cathedral City without any disruption. He can’t be far behind them, not with how fast he went, but they’ve got to be inside already. They’ll have guards on the entrance, but they’ll be comparatively untrained and easy to get by, at least for him. His main issue will lie in finding where Hicks and Shane are being held. Hopefully, they’re together but somehow he doubts it will be that easy.

He opts to stash the solar bike outside of the gates, hidden off to one side, but in a place where it will recharge so that they can make a quick escape. He pulls the hood of his Priest’s robes up to cover his head, hiding the cross tattoo on his face. Then, he approaches.

“Sir,” one of the two guards nods at him as he passes by. He’s blissfully ignorant of those who have been excommunicated, apparently, and his colleague is simply not paying attention. He strolls casually into the city streets and contemplates his next move.

He makes sure to keep his head down to avoid detection. That’s the last thing he needs right now. It’s also not lost on him that branding is one of the first things that will happen to Hicks - Shane, at least, faces no such trauma, he’s far too young for that - the cross tattoo links you to the Order and no one looks at you the same after you’re marked with it. He’s not letting that happen to Hicks.

“Where to start...?” He wonders to himself as he lurks in the shadows of the crowd. The area where he was trained was decimated, destroyed in the Vampire War that earned him his reputation. But there will be a new one, now, if they’re recruiting again. 

He’ll just have to find it.


	6. Chapter 6

Hicks is very much missing the bed back in their cabin. Missing the heavy, solid weight of the Priest’s arm slung across his chest and the warmth of shared space. Misses the sound of Shane’s ‘I’m-awake’ cry that draws them both out of bed in the mornings. He’s missing waking up someplace familiar because this is the second time he’s come back to consciousness and found his nightmares are reality.

This time, he wakes to pain and confinement. In a different cell now, one with less blood and bodies but also less spaces and stronger walls. He’s still chained, but they’ve let the cuffs stay in front. They still haven’t found his last throwing dagger either. But, his head aches, his vision is unhelpfully blurry, his left arm is swollen and useless at his side, and his wrists have scabbed over, broken open, and scabbed over again. The gash from the knife nick is an angry red color down his forearm. His cough is back in full force and he feels cold, freezing even, which means his fever is back, too. And there’s still no trace of Shane or of the Priest. Altogether, things are not looking good.

He’s contemplating the pros and cons of letting himself drift back to sleep - not much else he can do other than sit here and cough. 

But then he hears it. 

Shane’s wailing cry, a sound he’d know anywhere. It’s occasionally interrupted by the rough coughing that’s a result of the medicine wearing off. It grows closer and closer and so he forces himself to his feet and approaches the door. 

A trio of armed guards come into view, one of them carrying Shane. “Back off or you can forget this,” one of them snaps at him and so he backpedals because he thinks he knows where this is going and it actually is good. 

“The kid won’t shut up, that’s the only reason you’re getting him. But if you cause any more trouble, the Monsignors are prepared to cut their losses with you.” Another guard says, opening the gate and carefully standing by while the one holding Shane crosses in and walks close enough to pass the boy to Hicks. They accurately predict that he won’t risk another fight with Shane around and so they leave without injury.

He wrangles Shane under the chains connecting his wrists and holds him close, a difficult task given the present state of his left arm. The boy feels warm even against his own fevered skin, which does not bode well for his health, especially when combined with the persistent cough. Hicks lets himself sink down the wall, pulling his knees up to his chest and curling protectively around Shane, who has calmed substantially now, and waits. 

***

Coincidentally enough they rebuilt the new training area over the remnants of the old one. It’s not one of the first places the Priest checks, but it’s not that far down on the list. The heavy guard rotation surrounding it is a bit of a giveaway, and the two bodies he watches them drag out - clad in guard issue robes - suggests that he’s probably in the right place. 

He’s kind of proud at that. Hicks certainly hadn’t gone without a fight and if they’re dragging out their dead, he must’ve done some damage. Not that the Priest is surprised - after fighting vampires, humans are easy. 

But now he has to get in. 

He opts for subtlety this time, at least for now. He catches a guard going off-duty as he passes, snaps his neck with ease and drags him into the shadows. He strips the man of his uniform and weapons and casually strolls right into the midst of the training area. Too easy. 

Attaching himself to a couple of patrolling guards proves simple enough, too. No need to worry about opening doors when they’re doing it for him, but he tries to remember as many of the codes they use as he can for when he’s getting them out of there. 

“That’s the last time I volunteer to guard new recruits,” one of them mumbles, rubbing at presumably sore muscles. He’s young, a little bruised up, too. “If Collins hadn’t bashed him over the head, who knows how many he’d have taken out?”

“Oi,” the other rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Stop complaining, he’s hardly the first one to protest his recruitment, Lucas.”

The first one, Lucas, grumbles. “First one to already know the Priests magic tricks.”

So they’re definitely talking about Hicks. The Priest stays quiet behind them and they ignore him. It works. 

It’s hard to keep an eye out for Hicks while hiding his face. He manages short, quick scans before he has to drop his head again, getting caught now would be devastating, would pose far too much of a risk for Hicks and Shane and that’s the last thing he wants. All he wants is for them to be safe. Back at the house. 

They walk by a series of cell-like rooms. One of which is splattered with blood and he figures that’s where Hicks went on the attack. But then where is he now?

“Guess they moved him,” Lucas says, “I would’ve let him sit here in his own blood.”

And now he’s wondering how Hicks was injured, how bad it might be. He wants to grab both of the guards in front of them and demand answers, but that would only cause more trouble, it wouldn’t help him find Hicks any faster. 

“Well, they gave him back the kid, so that’s probably why.”

Good to know that they’re together, at least. That’s certainly helpful. 

He’s starting to wonder where they’re going, though. It seems like they’re curving back toward the entrance. He breaks off from them, ducks around a corner and that’s when he hears it. 

Coughing. 

Stupid, stupid coughing is the reason for all of this madness and now it’s actually proving helpful. He follows the sounds, which echo annoyingly against the stone and steel walls, but eventually he finds himself standing in front of another wall of cells. A few of them are occupied, but he can only focus on one of them.

And he doesn’t like what he sees. 

Hicks and Shane, barely awake it looks like. Hicks certainly hasn’t noticed him yet, at least, which is odd - the man is usually so observant and aware. Blood trailing down Hicks’ head, down his face and onto his neck, seeping into the collar of his shirt. Blood on his wrists - which are manacled together - and the angle his woefully swollen left arm is at does not suggest good things, either. Shane’s coughing, sounds worse than he did this morning when this all started and Hicks starts with his own coughs, too. 

“Hicks,” he says, as low and quiet as he can since there’s no way to know what the other captives will do when they realize what’s happening. “Hicks.”

No response, though, which is even more worrisome. 

He uses his abilities to crack the lock on the cell door, slips inside without a sound and moves to approach Hicks, who’s still slumped against the wall all curled around Shane. 

“Hicks,” he says again, and this time he gets a response, just not one he was expecting. 

Hicks is on his feet with Shane’s settled against the wall just behind him, acting as a guard. He still moves surprisingly swiftly for all of his injuries. “You’ll take my son away from me over my dead body.” He growls out, eyes unfocused and voice somewhat slurred. 

Oh, this is so not good. If Hicks is this out of it, getting out of here is going to be even more difficult. He holds out his hands, proving he’s weaponless (not that that would matter if he were trying to hurt Hicks, which he would never do). “Hicks, look. Look, okay? Not a guard, just needed to find you.” He’s not hiding his face anymore, hasn’t been since he finally spotted them, but Hicks can’t seem to focus. “It’s me, Hicks. I’m gonna get us out of here, get us home.”

A step closer and Hicks makes a surprising move, shifting to grab the last throwing dagger out of the top of his boot. The Priest is more than a little surprised that the guards missed that, the idiots. But he needs to act before this gets anymore out of hand. 

Words didn’t work, so he’ll try action. As good as Hicks is with a knife, the Priest is faster, better. He moves in, gets a hold of Hicks’ wrist (the good one, because he doesn’t want to make the bad one any worse than it already is, no matter how deliriously out of it Hicks is) and takes the knife away. “Hicks,” he says, reaching for the chains once he’s pocketed the blade. “Hold still and I’ll get these off of you, okay?” His abilities break those locks as easily as he’d gotten through the door and he lets the manacles drop to the ground. “I’m not a guard. A guard wouldn’t do that, right?”

Now Hicks just looks confused though, eyes wide but still kind of unfocused. “I don’t...”

He reaches out, moving carefully and slowly, hating every second of this because seeing Hicks like this is just plain torture. He’s glad he got here before they could start with the training or the branding, but he was still too late to stop this. He lifts his hand, letting it settle against Hicks’ neck, his skin still putting off scorching amounts of heat, but he lets his hand slide up to settle on the younger man’s cheek and his eyes slip closed in response as he leans into the touch. “I’ll get us home,” the Priest promises, letting his fingers move lightly over the edges of bruises and scrapes that mar Hicks’ face. 

There’s recognition in Hicks’ eyes when he opens them this time, a combination of relief and pain on his face. He opens his mouth to say something, to explain what happened, to apologize for getting caught, but he finds himself stepping forward instead, closing the distance between them in a hug that the Priest does not pull away from. It about kills his arm to do it, but he holds on because now there’s hope of getting out of here. “Glad you found us,” he chokes out. 

“Wouldn’t have stopped until I did,” he answers, talking over Hicks’ shoulder. This kind of comfort is strange for him. Aside from the forced close contact of their shared bed, he hasn’t been this close to another person in so long and honestly, he misses it. 

And he’s tired of missing it. Tired of the pointless rules that he still clings to from his days in the Order, when he was brainwashed by their absolute power. There was no point in marking him, no point in making the Priests and Priestesses outcasts in the City after the war ended. He’d broken other vows with barely a thought but for the safety of his daughter. What’s to stop him breaking this one for Hicks?

So he pulls back enough to get some distance between them, but not enough to break the hug. Hicks blinks up at him in confusion, licks his lips when he figures it out, but by then the Priest is kissing him. It’s quick, it has to be, when guards could come walking in at any minute, but it gets his point across. 

“We’ll talk about this later,” the Priest promises as he releases his hold. And this time, they will.


	7. Chapter 7

Hicks is barely aware of things after that. His mind is kind of fuzzy and delayed, like the rest of him has been since Doc Tomlin gave him that medicine. His injuries certainly haven’t helped, but the kiss... That had thrown him into even more confusion. 

After they break apart, the promised conversation lingering between them, the Priest gets serious. He bends down, hefting a grumpy and still coughing Shane into his arms. He hugs the boy close, just for a moment, before passing him to Hicks, making sure he’s held tightly in the younger man’s good arm. “Whatever happens, keep him close and try to keep him quiet, okay?” He asks, waiting for Hicks’ nod before he motions them toward the cell door. Robotically, Hicks follows after him, biting his lip to keep his own coughs hushed.

They find themselves weaving through a long and complex array of hallways, all of which blend unhelpfully together in Hicks’ confused mind when he tries to think of them later. 

Five minutes into their escape and the first guard appears, a lone patrolman who barely even realizes that he’s facing escaped recruits before the Priest lets a blade fly, killing the man with a swift hit to the chest. He flops to the ground, dead, almost instantly. The Priest retrieves his knife as he passes and they continue on without a word. 

They duck into a dimly lit hallway when Shane coughs and lets out a shrill cry as they near the entrance. The noise brings a gaggle of guards, more than a dozen armed men who had been milling about as the shifts changed and they were assigned to patrols. Hicks vaguely recalls a feeling of hopeless despair, thinks sadly of never getting back home, but the Priest stands strong in front of him, guarding Hicks and Shane with his body and his life and then he strikes without mercy.

It doesn’t compare at all to watching the Priest fight vampires. The first time he’d seen that, he’d mistakenly thought the man enjoyed killing, because it came so easily to him. His anger at the creatures had shown through in his actions, and it’s showing through now, too. But the vampires could put up a fight. The Priest moves fluidly around the room, taking on all of the guards at once. His knives fly, he makes impossible movements and jumps about at impressive speeds, but he never turns his back on Hicks and Shane, always keeps himself between them and their enemies. One by one, they all fall, bloody or broken. Every last one. 

Hicks stumbles over one of the bodies, almost goes down. The jarring movements send fresh agony through his arm but the Priest is right there, a hand settling on his back and steering him through a few more winding rooms until finally, the polluted Cathedral City sky looms above them, starting to grow darker with the coming sunset.

“Almost out,” the Priest says. “Just stay with me a little while longer.”

Hicks follows obediently as they weave through crowds of people, heads ducked down to limit detection and Shane pulled in close against him. More and more of the people they pass are civilians as they reach the main section of the city and soon the gates are within sight. The men on duty have changed and one of them recognizes the fugitives with ease. 

“Hey!” the man shouts, “Stop!” He reaches out, grabs hold of Hicks’ bad arm and the pain nearly brings him to the ground. He clutches Shane tightly, the boy wailing again with all the shouting and abrupt movements, as the Priest spins around to stop the assault. “They’re escaping!” The man shouts out, drawing unwanted attention toward the gates. 

Someone starts to draw the gates shut. If they close, then they’ll be trapped in here and now is not the time for that kind of setback. Hicks is reeling in pain to the point of sickness as the Priest acts fast, jumps the man holding him and cracks his neck quickly. The other guard is on the move though, gun out and trained on the Priest. He fires and the bullet grazes off of his shoulder. He’s about to send off a second shot, but then he’s dead, too. 

The gates about to slide shut, but Hicks finds himself hauled forward and out through it at the last possible moment, the Priest clutching desperately at him, pulling them to the side so they’ll be out of range of any gunfire. There is a plus to the gates closing, though, as now they’ll have a chance to get a head start on any pursuers. 

“Almost home,” the Priest promises, supporting Hicks as they hike around to where they find the stashed solar bike. Luckily, it’s exactly where the Priest left it before he went in. The Priest climbs on first, balancing the bike in place as Hicks slides on behind him, with Shane between them. “Hold on as tight as you can, yeah?” He presses, though they both know it won’t be an easy ride for him with the combination of holding on and holding Shane. The uneven ground of the Wastelands will not be kind to his injuries, either, but at least they’re out.

The Priest aims the bike toward the snowy desolation of the Wastelands and takes off. He drives and drives and drives until Cathedral City is no longer in sight. He drives on until they reach the Outpost that marks home. Hicks knows there’s nowhere else they would go, nowhere else they could go if they wanted to. Home is all they have and neither he or the Priest will allow the City guards to drive them from it. They will defend it and their family with everything they has and eventually, they’ll get the message. 

The bike comes to a stop by the porch, by then bathed in complete darkness, and the Priest reaches back to steady him, unstable as he is, as he climbs off. 

“Let’s get inside,” he says, grabbing up his bag of supplies from Augustine and slinging it over his shoulder before bracing Hicks to keep him moving. “Get you fixed up.” 

He finds himself inside within seconds, blissfully aware that he’s finally home and that he’s safe here, with Shane and the Priest. He lets go of the last of his adrenaline, the only thing that’s been keeping him going at all since he attacked the guards, and relaxes. 

“Ah, not yet,” the Priest tells him, keeping him from flopping backwards onto the bed. He keeps him sitting on the edge, while he gives Shane another dose of Dr. Tomlin’s cough medicine. He gives the boy a quick look-over and changes him into clean clothes before setting him down to sleep on an unoccupied section of their bed. They’re all too tense for any separation further than that right now. And then he turns his attention on Hicks.

But the Priest’s first step is to dose him, too, because his cough is awful and each time he moves, his arm pulses in pain. He drifts to unawareness quickly, but he feels the Priest stay close to him as he goes, feels the ghost of gentles touches as he loses consciousness and gives into the darkness, trusting the Priest to bring him out of it. 

***

The Priest sets to work. There’s a lot to do, but he needs to move quickly so that he can stand watch and make sure that those he loves are soundly protected from any incoming enemies. 

He bandages the deep wounds on Hicks’ wrists, where the chains cut into his skin. He stitches the long, jagged knife wound on his forearm closed. Hicks, all malleable and pliant, is completely compliant as the Priest tugs and cuts his ruined, bloodstained shirt off of him, revealing his bare chest, all bruised and marred, to his protector. He braces the broken arm and straps it tightly in place, making sure it can’t move and cause him any more pain than it already has. He takes care in cleaning up the blood from the head wound, patching that up as carefully as he can. He slips the man a dose of strong pain medication, which probably shouldn’t be mixed with the cough medicine, and strips Hicks down before settling him under the blankets of their bed. 

It’s not lost on him that they’ve come full circle. When he first showed up here, Hicks had been forced to do the same for him, patch him up in the dark of the night with no idea what had happened. The Priest has some idea, but he hates that this happened at all. 

He collects Shane, drags his fingers through the sleeping boy’s blond hair and settles him back down on Hicks’ good side, curled up in the crook of his arm. He wants more than anything to join them, to climb in beside Hicks and hold him close, make sure that nothing else will hurt him, be he can’t. He has to guard them from the night, when the potential risk for retribution is highest.

Nothing happens. Not for so long that he starts to think nothing is coming after them after all, but he won’t risk it and he was right to wait it out. 

Around dawn, half a dozen Cathedral City soldiers appear on the horizon and by the time they skid to a stop yards from his home, he knows what he’ll do. He’s already dug a deep hole in the yard, not an easy task in the icy cold of winter, but one he’d had to complete if he wants to send his message. 

The first man approaches him, armed and armored and pointing a gun at him. “Turn yourself in and give up the fugitives, vow breaker.”

“Not a chance,” he retorts, unimpressed. His voice, however, is hard and serious, daring them to challenge him for his family. “You’ll never touch them. You tell the Monsignors that. That they’ll never get my family, that they’re not taking anything away from me ever again.”

“You turn your back on God as well as your Brothers, your vows?”

“I turn my back on nothing but a corrupt order that makes what it wants out of God’s will and ignores what it does not wish to be true. I turn my back on a City that took everything from me,” the Priest growls out, having wiped his hands of the Monsignors corruption. “But, we’re not in the City anymore. We’re in the Wastelands and out here the Church is not welcome and it has no power.”

When they seem to realize that there’s no reasoning with him, they attack. The first man fires a gun at him, but he easily deflects the bullet back at the shooter, letting it bury itself in the man’s stomach. 

The Priest pulls out a knife, long and sharp, and strikes at the downed man, cleanly slicing his head off as he would have a vampire. He tosses it into the pit he dug and jumps at the next opponent. This one, too, he slays and decapitates. The others grow concerned.

“Anyone who dares to attack my family will suffer the same fate. Black Hat’s head is in that pit, dead and decaying like the rest of him. He was a monster and so are all of you, doing the dirty work of the corrupt. You will all rot with him,” two more go down, leaving just two left standing. “Except one. One of you will relay my warning to the Monsignors and they will leave us be or else I will come for their heads, too. You will remind them that having my family is the only thing keeping me in line, that I will not be stopped if I lose them and that I will avenge them using every ability I have been granted by God. You will tell them that today was only a taste of what I will do should any harm come to Hicks or to Shane.” He takes down one more, as only one man is required to send a message. “You will tell them to give up on recruiting them, that they’ll be allowed to go wherever they want without the risk of what happened in Augustine happening again because I will always find them.”

The man he leaves alive cowers before him, staring wide-eyed up at his blood-spattered form. “You will tell them all of this and you will never return here, no matter your orders.”

“Y-yes, sir,” the man stammers, shaking on the ground. 

“Take the bodies with you, as proof of my threat. All of them. I do not want them here. And go.”

He watches the survivor struggle with the bodies, driving them away from the Outpost one by one before he takes his leave for good, racing back to the City. 

The Priest is confident that they will not be bothered again. Even the Monsignors know a serious threat when they see one and his move definitely qualifies as such. Nonetheless, he will stay on guard for as long as it takes to prove true. 

For tonight, though, he expects no further trouble, so he covers the pit of heads and returns to the house. He strips off his clothes to burn them, too blood-covered to be salvageable. He finally gets around to patching up his own wounds, grazes from punches and bullets that just add to his varied collection of scars, and then he lets himself pass out at Hicks’ bedside.


	8. Chapter 8

Hicks wakes up alone. 

The world around him is eerily silent, so much so that he sits bolt upright in surprise. This proves to be a mistake, and a painful one at that, as his injuries pulse in complaint of the abrupt movements. He takes in his surroundings, the house, vacant but for him. The angle of the sun through the windows suggests that it’s late afternoon, but he has little else in terms of information, though he’s pretty sure he’s been in and out of consciousness a few times over a pretty lengthy period.

“Priest?” He calls out, voice rough and hoarse, but he doesn’t feel the urge to cough. Despite that, he’s kind of afraid, afraid that the Cathedral City men somehow managed to take out the Priest and that they took Shane back with them, that they left him here alone. He stands, unsteady and wavering as the pain shoots through him. He stumbles toward the front door.

He’s clad in clothes that have to belong to the Priest, too big on his slightly smaller frame (and that only adds to his lack of coordination) and he’s guessing he complied with that during one of his fleeting moments of awareness. Again, he wonders how long he’s been out. 

“Fuck,” he curses, when he trips into the door once he’s finally managed to get it open. He tries to stay on his feet, but fails, landing hard on his knees. His vision swims and a wave a nausea hits him with impressive force so he opts to stay perfectly still until it passes. 

“You really shouldn’t be moving.” A voice says. He knows it’s the Priest, but he can’t open his eyes, not yet at least, to figure out where the hell the man came from. A hand lands on his shoulder, the good one, and he focuses on that instead of the pounding pain in his bad one. 

Hicks breathes in and out slowly, trying to keep himself from screaming. 

“Let me go put Shane down and I’ll help you back to bed,” the Priest promises, and then his hand disappears. It returns a short moment later, arms curling around his chest as the Priest hauls him back to his feet without putting much pressure on any of his injuries. “What were you thinking?”

“Couldn’t find you,” he answers, the words breathed out through gritted teeth as he fights against the pain. The Priest supports him, walking him back over to their bed, where he sets him down gently before sitting down beside him. Shane sits there, too, playing with his stuffed bear. “What’s going on?”

A hand on his back now, moving in circles that soothe him slightly. “Just took Shane outside for a minute, he was getting cranky, being stuck in here,” he explains, as the two of them watch the boy carefully. “His fever’s gone. Yours, too. And if they’re smart, no one from the Cities will be trying to come after either you ever again.”

There are definitely questions he needs to ask about that last part, because he has to wonder just what his protector did in the time he was out of it that would have so efficiently scared them off, but not now. Right now, he’s just glad to hear that they’re not sick anymore, even as the Priest summarizes the plethora of injuries he patched up and lists off the things he needs to bandage again now that Hicks is up and conscious. 

“And, ugh, that thing. That thing that we need to talk about. From before. Can we talk about that?” Hicks asks, hoping he did not imagine the kiss in the Cathedral City cells or the promise to revisit the topic in the midst of a fever-induced delirium. “That, that happened, right?”

The Priest nods. “Yes, it did. And it’ll happen again, if you want that. Whatever you want.”

He’s happy to hear that, but... “What changed your mind?”

“The vow was theirs. Just another tool to control us in the Order, just like the tattoos and the isolation. I’m not letting them control me anymore, not in any way,” he says, “It’s a fight they won’t win with me ever again, especially when it comes to you. Taking you and Shane, taking my family, was the last straw. I’ve cut all ties.”

“Thanks,” Hicks says, “for that, by the way. Saving us. I was a little worried for a while there.”

“Nothing would have stopped me from finding the two of you, from getting you back from them.”

Hicks shifts, but twisting his body toward the Priest’s proves difficult with his arm and the Priest easily catches sight of his wince when he moves to close the distance between them for a kiss. 

“I know I said ‘whatever you want,’ but I’m going to amend that with ‘once you’re better.’”

“Fair enough,” Hicks answers. “Just a kiss.”

“Okay,” he agrees, moving toward Hicks so that the younger man doesn’t have to shift at all. One kiss, light and chaste, for now, is all he gives. Once Hicks’ arm is healed, once bruises have faded and cuts have turned into scars, then things will be different, they’ll be whatever Hicks wants them to be because that’s all the Priest wants, too. All he wants is to be with Hicks and to watch Shane grown up, to have his family.


End file.
